Promoting employee engagement through organizational culture: An integrative action research in a finance company in the new normal

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically transformed workplaces of organizations forcing many companies to adopt remote work arrangement. This has made significant impact on the behavioral, social, and overall work culture. These changes test leaders of companies and organizations to keep the well-being of their employees¸ to consistently engage them, and to promote an inclusive and collaborative culture. This action research focused on how to promote employee engagement by strengthening organizational culture. Our financing company operated in a hybrid work set up where some employees work on site while others work remotely. This situation added stress, loneliness, and demotivation among our employees. Some employees are less productive while others feel overworked. There was also a gap how our officers and rank-and-file employees experience our company culture. Our team of collaborators analyzed the causes of reduced engagement and culture gap to help us come up with appropriate interventions. The action research tools such as the first, second, and third practices were applied in the spirit of collaboration and co-inquiry. Lewin’s Change Management Model and The Simply Irresistible Organization of Bersin (2015) were used as third-person frameworks to guide us in each cycle. Our intervention on the first cycle was focused on laying out the foundation of a positive work environment for the employees through a virtual team session. Our second cycle was made to sustain employee connections and rapport and to build a collaborative learning environment through a virtual team learning session. We concluded that leadership, trust, and communication are the essential components in building team collaboration and positive work environment that inspires motivation, optimism, expression, learning, innovation, and ultimately strong work culture. Keywords: Action research, engagement, culture, leadership, collaboration, communication, positive work environmen